White Gold Wielder Part 41

Linden did not know how to respond. She was distressed by his troubled condition, gratified by his fairness, and in- censed by the First's att.i.tude. Yet would she not have taken the same position in the Swordmain's place? If Kevin Landwaster had spoken to someone else, would she not have been proud to repose her confidence in the Unbeliever? But that recognition only left her all the more alone. She had no right to try to persuade Pitchwife to her cause. Both he and his wife deserved' better than that she should attempt to turn them against each other*or against Covenant. And yet she had no way to test or affirm her own sanity except by direct opposition to him.

(310 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

Even in bis fixed weariness and determination, he was so dear to her that she could hardly endure the acuity of her desire for him.

A fatigue and defeat of her own made her stumble over the uneven turf. But she refused the solace of Pitchwife's support. Wanly, she asked him, "What are you going to do?"

"Naught," he replied. "I am capable of naught." His empathy for her made him acidulous. "I have no sight to equal yours. Before the truth becomes plain to me, the time for all necessary doing will have come and gone. That which requires to be done, you must do." He paused; and she thought that he was finished, that their comradeship had come to an end. But then he gritted softly through his teeth, "Yet I say this. Chosen. You it was who obtained Vain Demondim-sp.a.w.n's escape from the snares of Elemesnedene.

You it was who made possible our deliverance from the Sandhold. You it was who procured safety for all but Cable Seadieamer from the Worm of the World's End, when the "Andelaint forgive!9 379 Earthfriend himself had fallen nigh to ruin. And you it was who found means to extinguish the Banefire. Your worth is manifold and certain.

"The First will choose as she wishes. I will give you my life, if you ask it of me."

Linden heard him. After a while, she said simply, "Thanks."

No words were adequate. In spite of his own baffled distress, he had given her what she needed.

They walked on together in silence.

The next morning, the sun's red aura was distinct enough for all the company to see.

Linden's open nerves searched the Hills, probing Andelam's reaction to the Sunbane. At first, she found none. The air had its same piquant savor, commingled of flowers and dew and treesap. Aliantha abounded on the hillsides. No discernible ill gnawed at the wood of the nearby Gildens and willows.

And the birds and animals that flitted or scurried into view and away again were not suffering from any wrong. The Earthpower treasured in the heart of the region still withstood the pressure of corruption.

But by noon that was no longer true. Pangs of pain began t to run up the tree trunks, aching in the veins of the leaves.

^ The birds seemed to become franticas the numbers of insects ^. increased; but the woodland creatures 'had grown frightened .', and gone into hiding. The tips of the gra.s.s-blades turned y-jbrown; some of the shrubs showed signs of blight. A distant fetor came slowly along the breeze. And the ground began to give off faint, emotional tremors*an intangible quivering which no one but Linden felt. It made the soles of her feet hurt in her shoes.

Muttering curses. Covenant stalked on angrily eastward.

In spite of her distrust. Linden saw that his rage for Andelain (311 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

was genuine. He pushed himself past the limits of bis strength to hasten his traversal of the Hills, his progress toward the crisis of the Despiser. The Sunbane welded him to his purpose.

Linden kept up with him doggedly, determined not to let him get ahead of her. She understood his fury, shared it: in this place, the red sun was atrocious, intolerable. But his ire made him appear capable of any madness which might put an end to Andelain's hurt, for good or ill.

Dourly, the Giants accompanied their friends. Covenant's White Gold Wielder 380.

best pace was not arduous for Pitcbwife; the First could have traveled much faster. And her features were sharp with desire for more speed, for a termination to the Search, so that the question which had come between her and her husband would be answered and finished. The difficulty of restraining herself to Covenant's short strides was obvious in her. While the company paced through the day, she held herself grimly silent Her mother had died in childbirth; her father, in the Soulbiter. She bore herself as if she did not want to admit how important Pitchwife's warmth had become, to her.

For that reason. Linden felt a strange, unspoken kinship toward the First. She found it impossible to resent the Swordmain's att.i.tude. And she swore to herself that she would never ask Pitchwife to keep his promise.

Vain strode blankly behind the companions. But of Findail there was no sign. She watched for him at intervals, but he did not reappear.

That evening. Covenant slept for barely half the night: then he went on his way again as if he were trying to steal ahead of his friends. But somehow through her weary slumber Linden felt him leave. She roused herself, called the Giants up from the faintly throbbing turf, and went after him.

Sunrise brought an aura of fertility to the dawn and a soughing rustle like a whisper of dread to the trees and brush. Linden felt the leaves whimpering on their boughs, the greensward aching plaintively. Soon the Hills would be reduced to the victimized helplessness of the rest of the Land. They would be scourged to wild growth, desiccated to ruin, afflicted with rot, pommeled by torrents. And that thought made her as fierce as Covenant, enabled her to keep up with him while he exhausted himself. Yet the mute pain of green and tree was not the worst effect of the Sunbane.

Her senses had been scoured to raw sensitivity: she knew that beneath the sod, under the roots of the woods, the fever Of Andelain's bones had become so argute that it was almost physical. A nausea of revulsion was rising into the Earthpower of the Hills. It made her guts tremble as if she were walking across an open wound.

By degrees. Covenant's pace became labored. Andelain no longer sustained him. More and more of its waning (312 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

strength went to ward off the corruption of the Sunbane. As a result, the fertile sun had little superficial effect A few "Andelain! forgive!" 381 trees groaned taller, grew twisted with hurt; some of the shrubs raised their branches like limbs of desecration. All the birds and animals seemed to have fled. But most of the woods and gra.s.s were preserved by the power of the soil in which they grew. Aliantha clung stubbornly to themselves, as they had for centuries. Only the a.n.a.lystic refulgence of the Hills was gone*only the emanation of superb and concentrated health*only the exquisite vitality.

However, the sickness in the underlying rock and dirt mounted without cessation. That night, Covenant slept the sleep of exhaustion and diamondraught. But for a long time Linden could not rest, despite her own fatigue. Whenever she laid her head to the gra.s.s, she heard the ground grinding its teeth against a backdrop of slow moans and futile outrage.

Well before dawn, she and her companions arose and went on. She felt now that they were racing the dissolution of the Hills.

That morning, they caught their first glimpse of Mount Thunder.

It was still at least a day away. But it stood stark and fearsome above Andelain, with the sun leering past its shoulder and a furze of unnatural vegetation darkening its slopes. From this distance, it looked like a t.i.tan that had been beaten to its knees. - - Somewhere inside that mountain. Covenant intended to find Lord Foul.

He turned to Linden and the Giants, his eyes red-rimmed and flagrant Words yearned m him, but he seemed unable to utter them. She had thought him uncognizant of the Giants disconsolation, offended by her own intransigent refusal; but she saw now that he was not. He understood her only too well. A fierce and recalcitrant part of him felt as she did, fought like loathing against his annealed purpose.

He did not want to die, did not want to lose her or the Land. And he had withheld any explanation of himself from the Giants so that they would not side with him against her.

So that she would not be altogether alone.

He wished to say all those things. They were plain to her aggrieved senses. But his throat closed on them like a fist, would not let them out.

She might have reached out to him then. Without altering any of her promises, she could have put her love around White Gold Wielder 382.

him. But horror swelled in the ground on which they stood, and it s.n.a.t.c.hed her attention away from him.

(313 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

Abhorrence. Execration. Sunbane and Earthpower locked in mortal combat beneath her feet. And the Earthpower could not win. No Law defended it Corruption was going to tear the heart out of the Hills. The ground had become so unstable that the Giants and Covenant felt its tremors.

"Dear Christ!" Linden gasped. She grabbed at Covenant's arm. "Come on!" With all her strength, she pulled him away from the focus of Andelain's horror.

The Giants were aghast with incomprehension; but they followed her. Together, the companions began to run.

A moment later, the gra.s.s where they had been standing erupted.

Buried boulders shattered. A large section of the greensward was shredded; stone-shards and dirt slashed into the sky. The violence which broke the Earthpower in that place sent a shock throughout the region, gouged a pit in the body of the ground. Remnants of ruined beauty rained everywhere.

And from the naked walls of the pit came squirming and clawing the sick, wild verdure of the fertile sun. Monstrous as murder, a throng of ivy teemed upward to spread its pall over the ravaged turf.

In the distance, another eruption boomed. Linden felt it like a wail through the ground. Piece by piece, the life of Andelaiu was being torn up by the roots.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Covenant raged. "Oh, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You've crippled everything else. Aren't you content?"

Turning, he plunged eastward as if he meant to launch himself at the Despiser's throat.

Linden kept up with him. Pain belabored her senses. She could not speak because she was weeping.

SEVENTEEN: Into the Wightwarrens EARLY the next morning, the company climbed into the foothills of Mount Thunder near the constricted rush of the Soulsease River. Covenant was gaunt with fatigue, his gaze as gray as ash. Linden's eyes burned like fever in their sockets; strain throbbed through the bones of her skull. Even the Giants were tired. They had only stopped to rest in s.n.a.t.c.hes during the night The First's lips were the color of her fingers clinching the hilt of her sword. Pitchwife's visage looked like it was being torn apart. Yet the four of them were united by their urgency. They attacked the lower slopes as if they were racing the sun which rose behind me fatal bulk of the mountain.

A desert sun.

Parts of Andelain had already become as blasted and (314 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

ruinous as a battlefield.

The Hills still clung to the life which had made them lovely. While it lasted, Caer-CaveraI's nurture had been complete and fundamental. The Sunbane could not simply flush all health from the ground in so few days. But the dusty sunlight reaching past the shoulders of Mount Thunder revealed that around the fringes of Andelain*and in places across its -heart*the damage was already severe.

The vegetation of those regions had been ripped up, riven, effaced by hideous eruptions. Their ground was cratered and pitted like the ravages of an immedicable disease. The previous day, the remnants of those woods had been overgrown and strangled by the Sunbane's feral fecundity. But now, as 383.

White Gold Wielder 384.

the sun advanced on that verdure, every green and living thing slumped into viscid sludge which the desert drank away.

Linden gazed toward the Hills as if she, too, were dying.

Nothing would ever remove the sting of that devastation from her heart. The sickness of the world soaked into her from the landscape outstretched and tormented before her.

Andelain still fought for its life and survived. Much of it had not yet been hurt. Leagues of soft slopes and natural growth separated the craters, stood against the sun's arid rapine. But where the Sunbane had done its work the harm was as keen as anguish. If she bad been granted the chance to save Andelain's health with her own life, she would have taken it as promptly as Covenant. Perhaps she, too, would have smiled.

She sat on a rock in a field of boulders that cluttered the slope too thickly to admit vegetation. Panting as if his lungs were raw with ineffective outrage. Covenant bad stopped there to catch his breath. The Giants stood nearby. The First studied the west as if that scene of destruction would give her strength when the time came to wield her blade. But Pitchwife could not bear it He perched himself on a boulder with his back to the Andelainian Hills, His hands toyed with his flute, but he made no attempt to play it.

After a while. Covenant rasped, "Broken*'* There was a slain sound in his voice, as if within him also something vital were perishing. "All that beauty*" Perhaps during the night he had lost his mind, " 'Your very presence here empowers me to master you. The ill that you deem most terrible is upon you.' " He was quoting Lord Foul; but he spoke as if the words were his. " There is despair laid up for you here*'"

At once, the First turned to him. "Do not speak thus. It is false."

(315 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

He gave no sign that he had heard her, "It's not my fault,'*

he went on harshly. "I didn't do any of this. None of it But I'm the cause. Even when I don't do anything. It's all being done because of me. So I won't have any choice. Just by being alive, I break everything I love." He sc.r.a.ped his fingers through the stubble of his beard; but his eyes continued staring at the waste of Andelain, haunted by it "You'd think I wanted this to happen."

"No!" the First protested. "We hold no such conception.

Into the Wightwarrens 385 You must not doubt. It is doubt which weakens*doubt which corrupts. Therefore is this Despiser powerful. He does not doubt While you are certain, there is hope." Her iron voice betrayed a note of fear. "This price will be exacted from him if you do not doubt!"

Covenant looked at her for a moment. Then he rose stiffly to his feet His muscles and his heart were knotted so tightly that Linden could not read him.

"That's wrong." He spoke softly, in threat or appeal. "You need to doubt. Certainty is terrible. Let Foul have it. Doubt makes you human." His gaze shifted toward Linden. It reached out to her like flame or beggary, the culmination and defeat of all his power in the Banefire. "You need every doubt you can find. I want you to doubt I'm hardly human anymore."

Each flare and wince of his eyes contradicted itself. Stop me. Don't touch me. Doubt me. Doubt Kevin. Yes. No.

Please.

Please.

His inchoate supplication drew her to him. He did not appear strong or dangerous now, but only needy, appalled by himself. Yet he was as irrefusable as ever. She touched her hand to his scruffy cheek; her arms hurt with the tenderness of her wish to hold him.

But she would not retreat from the commitments she had made, whatever their cost. Perhaps her years of medical training and self-abnegation had been nothing more than a way of running away from death; but the simple logic of that flight had taken her in the direction of life, for others if not for herself. And in the marrow of her bones she had experienced both the Sunbane and Andelain. The choice between them was as clear as Covenant's pain.

She bad no answer for his appeal. Instead, she gave him one of her own. "Don't force me to do that" Her love was naked in her eyes. "Don't give up."

A spasm of grief or anger flinched across his face. His voice sank to a desert sc.r.a.ping in the back of his throat. "I wish I could make you understand." He spoke flatly, all inflection burned away. "He's gone too far. He can't get away with this. Maybe he isn't really sane anymore. He isn't going to get what he wants."

(316 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

But his manner and his words held no comfort for her. He 386 might as well have announced to the Giants and Vain and the ravaged world that he still intended to surrender his ring.

Yet he remained strong enough for his purpose, in spite of little food, less rest, and the suffering of Andelain. Dourly, be faced the First and Pitohwife again as if he expected questions or protests. But die Swordmain held herself stem.

Her husband did not look up from his flute.

To their silence. Covenant replied, "We need to go north for a while. Until we get to the river. That's our way into Mount Thunder."

Sighing, Pitchwife gained his feet. He held his flute in both hands. His gaze was focused on nothing as he snapped the small instrument in half.

With all his strength, he hurled the pieces toward the Hills.

Linden winced. An expostulation died on the Firsts lips.

Covenant's shoulders hunched.

As grim as a cripple, Pitchwife raised his eyes to the Unbeliever. "Heed me well,'* he murmured clearly. "I doubt"

"Good!'* Covenant rasped intensely. Then he started moving again, picking a path for himself among tfae boulders.

Linden followed with old cries beating against her heart Haven't you even got the suts to go on living? You never loved me anyway. But she knew as surely as vision that he did love her. She had no means by which to measure what had happened to him in the Banefire. And Gibbon*s voice answered her, taunting her with the truth. Are you not evil?

The foothills of Mount Thunder, ancient Gravin Threndor, were too rugged to bear much vegetation. And the light of the desert sun advanced rapidly past the peak now, wreaking dissolution on the ground's residual fertility. The company was hampered by strewn boulders and knuckled slopes, but not by the effects of the previous sun. Still the short journey toward the Soulsease was arduous. The sun's loathsome corruption seemed to parch away the last of Linden's strength.

Heatwaves like precursors of hallucination tugged at the edges of her mind. A confrontation with the Despiser would at least put an end to this horror and rapine. One way or the other. As she panted at the hillsides, she found herself repeating the promise she had once made in Revelstone*the promise she had made and broken. Never. Never again.

Whatever happened, she would not return to the Sunbane.

Into the Wightwarrens 387 Because of her weakness. Covenant's exhaustion, and the (317 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

difficulty of the terrain, the company did not reach the vicinity of the River until midmoming.

The way the hills baffled sound enabled her to catch a glimpse of the swift water before she heard it. Then she and her companions topped the last rise between them and the Soulsease; and the loud howl of its rush slapped at her.

Narrowed by its stubborn granite channel, the river raced below her, white and writhing in despair toward its doom.

And its doom towered over it, so ma.s.sive and dire that the mountain filled all the east. Perhaps a league to Linden's right, the river flumed into the gullet of Mount Thunder and was swallowed away*ingested by the catacombs which mazed the hidden depths of the peak. When that water emerged again, on the Lower Land behind Gravin Threndor, it would be so polluted by the vileness of the Wightwarrens, so rank with the waste of chamals and breeding-dens, the spillage of forges and laboratories, the effluvium of corruption, that it would be called the Denies Course*the source of Sarangrave Flat's peril and perversion.

For a crazy moment. Linden thought Covenant meant to ride that extreme current into the mountain. But then he pointed toward the bank directly below him; and she saw that a roadway had been cut into the foothills at some height above the River. The River itself wa's declining: six days had pa.s.sed since the last sun of rain; and the desert sun was rapidly drinking away the water which Andelain still provided. But the markings on the channel's sheer walls showed that the Soulsease virtually never reached as high as the roadway.

Along this road in ages past, armies had marched out of Mount Thunder to attack the Land. Much of the surface was ruinous, cracked and gouged by time and the severe alternation of the Sunbane, slick with spray; but it was still traversable. And it led straight into the dark belly of the mountain.

Covenant gestured toward the place where the walls rose like cliffs to meet the sides of Mount Thunder. He had to shout to make himself heard, and his voice was veined with stress. 'That's Treacher's Gorge! Where Foul betrayed Kevin and the Council openly for the first time! Before they knew what he was! The war that broke Kevin's heart started there!"